ZTE doesn’t have a strong presence here in the U.S., but the vendor revealed several smartphones at this year’s Mobile World Congress trade show that will be big sellers in a number of markets. The Era, Orbit and PF112 are among the new ZTE phones that will launch this year, and we spent some time with each of them on Monday. The Era and the PF112 both run Google’s Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, while the Orbit is a Windows Phone. The Era is a quad-core Tegra 3-powered beast with a 4.3-inch screen and high-end specs that rival any device launched here at the show. The PF112 sports an even larger 4.5-inch screen, tri-band HSPA+ and an 8-megapixel shooter. The Orbit is the company’s low-end Windows Phone model, with a 4-inch display, a 1GHz processor and 4GB of on-board storage. In use, the Windows Phone-powered Orbit was definitely impressive for an entry-level smartphone, exhibiting the smooth user experience we’ve come to expect from handsets powered by Microsoft’s mobile platform. The Android phones weren’t operational, so we can’t comment on their performance. We can definitely still admire their sleek designs though, so check out our hands-on gallery for photos of each of these new ZTE phones.

ZTE announced a range of new smartphones at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, but the star of the show was undoubtedly the company’s new flagship Android phone, the ZTE Era. The Era is a quad-core Tegra 3-powered Android 4.0 phone with a 4.3-inch 960 x 540-pixel qHD display, 8GB of internal storage, HSPA+ and a case that is just 7.8 millimeters thick, which is even thinner than the HTC One S announced on Sunday. “The numbers speak for themselves. With 50 percent growth in handset shipments and 400 percent growth in smartphone shipments, we are confident that we are entering a new era in the mobile terminal market,” said He Shiyou, Executive Vice President and Head of the Terminals Division, in a statement. The ZTE Era captures the excitement we feel about the future and brings it to life in a fantastic new device.” Announced alongside the Era is the ZTE Orbit, a new entry-level Windows Phone with a 4-inch 800 x 480-pixel display, a single-core 1GHz processor, 4GB of storage and a 5-megapixel camera that will launch in the second quarter. ZTE’s press releases follow below. More →